Starting this season, visitors to Intrawest resorts will be seeing a lot more helmets on the slopes. Intrawest, which owns Mont Tremblant, Whistler Blackcomb, Copper, Winter Park, Steamboat, Stratton, and several other resorts, is recommending that all skiers wear helmets and making them mandatory in children ski lessons and in terrain parks. Next season they will be required for many on-mountain employees.

Intrawest’s Director of Communications, Ian Galbraith, said that, so far, the program has been popular. “The majority of people are very supportive of it,” he told us.

The new rule comes a season after actress Natasha Richardson died after falling and hitting her head during a ski lesson at Mont Tremblant. She wasn’t wearing a helmet.

Galbraith said that the new helmet policy isn’t necessarily related. “It’s not a response,” he said. “It’s something we feel is the right move to make.”